Our Children – Why Must They Be Remanded? -By Ismail Misbahu

It begins by saying:

“As porridge benefits those who heat and eat it, so does a child benefits those that rear it.” ~ African proverb — Amharic.

I’m amazed at the way remand homes (Gidan Horon Yara) have become a problem for our children. Though they ought to be correctional centres, some of these children end up being sodomized.

In their original form, Remand Homes are ideally meant to handle various court cases on juvenile/child/teenage crimes — most of which involved criminal cases committed by ‘criminal’ children and, or others involving children as victims of adult crimes committed by adult criminals. Alas, the perverse world has claimed too much on the soul of our children — never had children moral training institutions become mere sedomite centers! It is alleged that children are studiously been sodomized — so much cases have held proper of this claim.

Being the area where my findings based upon, Katsina hosts two or three such types of training centers, the old Social Welfare Center where children with delinquent behavior await trial/punishment, the Remand Homes (aka “Gidan Mallam Nigga”) and the Children Training School (Reformatory — ‘Makarantar Horon Yara). Unlike the Old Social Welfare Center and Remand Home which handle the proceeds of court filed-cases on juvenile and adult crimes, the Reformatory is a conventional children training school that offers admissions to children whose parents applied for their moral training. All of them though hitherto non-formalized institutions had their cases documented since 1990s.

In these centers, especially in the remand homes and the trial await centers, like the rest of the north, children in custody are congested, and also juveniles are usually not separated from adults and hardened criminals contrary to the provision of the law. They also face severe hazards and dehumanizing conditions of incarceration, including poor feeding and clothing, exposure to disease and the risk of physical and sexual abuse. The report by UNICEF (2009) presents a larger percentage, about 73% of Nigerian children under this warming condition — there’s no adequate facilities. It is averred in this report that remand homes are sometimes used as dumping grounds for children that do not fit anywhere else. That the poor living conditions of the remand homes constitute a violation of children’s rights to health, nutrition, education and recreation. Absence or lack of appropriate medical treatment have caused severe rashes and sores in children skins.

Far from being a mere narrative prejudice that children are been sodomized, the premonition that something of that nature could have happened in the remand homes Katsina may not have been far from real as security (Mob Police) were, in haughty mood — haunting all around the frontage like headless riders! I couldn’t have been able to capture a shot from the inside because of its conditional severity and, even more unfortunately, because of the extreme tight of the security guards. Indeed the interviews I conducted with some of the personnel in the area hinted at.!

At the time I was gathering data i.e. as at early 2018, it was accumulated that about 401 children were remanded at the Remand Home Katsina – 93% of which were male children while 7% were female. Also of the total 401 children, about 100 were reported to have come from the southern districts of the state i.e. from Funtua town and its environs. This is not all-inclusive with the figure reportedly escaped which has not been accurately established because of “record security”! Most of the cases attributed to these areas are those of kidnapping, rape, theft and homicidal killings.

It’s pathetic, and indeed even morally starving that children today are seen as victims of both parental and nursing care — they almost completely lost all the moral and psychological training both from parent and schools. It is a big irony that, whereas family institutions and schools are seen as occupying the center stage in children moral theatre, remand homes are employed to gerrymander the genres of children moral philosophy. Humiliation, bullying, drilling and corporal punishment, are the ‘sweetest’ lyrics that go with the dance! Children who got to escape from such moral humbug, yet unluckily have no world to secure — home is no longer a peaceful place — so they become the cockscrews for thriving violence. Who faults it? Must they been remanded? Where’s the responsibility?

Of course it shouldn’t be untrue that some children are born with delinquent behavior and so they behave awkwardly. But parent and schools should be at the behest of controlling their children-engendering instincts —so much of which couldn’t have been materialized had the parental and nursing care been judiciously and properly applied.

Amidst with the intense pressure caused by poverty, unemployment, frequent family conflicts, political instability, unequal share of wealth — and extreme differences in socio-economic wellbeing, the perverse insecurity saga has also mis-informed the thought and perception of our children — the more dangerous example here is this question of sodomizing the remanded!

Besides, part of what supported the continual existence of these ‘children grooming centers’ is the general lack of trust in the formal social-control procedures — which prevent parent from reporting children anti-social behaviour to concerned public authorities. The frequently inhibiting children delinquencies with such vices as vandalism, drug abuse, weapon carrying, alcoholism, rape, examination malpractice, school violence, cultism, skiving and truancy, e.t.c. are often not been reported to the right authorities concerned. But even more specifically are such anti-social anomalies as kidnapping, rape and homicidal killings — largely preferred as not been reporting — so much of which are cases handled to clergy just to avoid the fear of exposing guilty in courts. The role of the clergy (i.e. the Mallams and elderly) is ideally very intermediate as most of these cases are not exposed — and have remained largely sacred within the jurisdiction of family — the elderly and clergy.

However, and even more suspiciously, is the fundamental question of the systemic efficacy of the formal control mechanism. Researches have shown that though provisions on legal punishment exist within the Nigeria’s legal frame work but there are no proper and meaningful provisions for juvenile offenders. The Nigerian juvenile justice services are grossly inadequate in both quantitative and qualitative terms to meet up the rights of the juveniles. These inadequacies impair the capacity of courts, police, and remand homes to meet up with the United Nations Rules and Guidelines, as well as other international standards on the punishment of juvenile crimes. The fact that these inadequacies are due to policy defects, inadequate funding, incoherent and punitive programs, have reduced these institutions to mere fortresses of punishment instead of correctional and rehabilitation institutions.

Although there are recorded attempts by the Federal Government towards enacting laws at the federal and state levels that geared to complying with international standards, yet most of these laws largely remained ineffective due to failure of domestication by the various state governments as well as the enforcement challenge that rendered the formal control procedure somewhat obsolete.

Presently in Katsina, the only Court that handles cases on juvenile crimes is the Chief Magistrate Court 3 — itself not officially designed to strictly handle cases for that purpose. Like other courts in the north which are designed so to be, the interference in the punishment of juvenile and adult offenders has been most prevalent. It is also alleged that juvenile offenders are becoming victims of police dereliction — as their ages are often falsified as those of juvenile offenders — so much that the legal requirements for their treatment is violated as adults’. It couldn’t have been wrong therefore to compose that legal procedures on the punishment of adult crimes are often misapplied on juvenile crimes in Police and Courts as most juvenile cases have carelessly been transferred to adult courts.

So much have indeed failed to register promises into fulfilments. Families have lost their parental responsibilities, teachers have withdrawn their principles as they failed to fulfil their promises, as well as government also failed to afford and accommodate the right care to children that reward the life of the nation.

On the whole it is a high time to consider reviewing the juvenile justice administration in Nigeria as children are increasingly becoming victims of the mischief world and global security threat. There’s as well, a compelling need to resuscite the true spirit of our children to cultivating the ethos of morality through the revival of family institutions, schools and training centers. The shoulders that labour the responsibility, as in any other society, are not outside the three organic chains — of parent/family, schools and government. A Nigerian proverb has this to say, and I conclude:

“My people, the children of our fathers and sons. Sickness is like rain. Does the rain fall on one roof alone? No. Does it fall on one body and not on another? No. Whoever the rain sees, on him it rains. Does it not? It is the same with sickness.” So it will not remain sickness forever to our generations and many more that come by our procreation.

Ismail Misbahu could be reached at:

ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com.

mhssey2015@gmail.com